NEW DELHI: The chief minister of India’s Maharashtra state resigned late on Wednesday following a rebellion in the ruling party.
The political turmoil in the country’s richest and second most populous state began after a faction led by minister Eknath Shinde rebelled against Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Thackeray’s party Shiv Sena ruled the state for two and a half years in coalition with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Indian National Congress.
Shinde and his group of defecting state assembly members accused Shiv Sena of going soft on its “Hindutva” ideology and recently gathered in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The rebel group moved from Gujarat to a hotel in Assam, another BJP-ruled state in the remote northeast region bordering Bangladesh, and continued to build support for toppling the Thackeray-led government.
The group, which claims support of dozens of lawmakers, on Wednesday moved under heavy security to a hotel in Goa, which borders Maharashtra, as the state governor ordered a floor test in the assembly.
Thackeray resigned as chief minister after the Indian Supreme Court allowed the vote of confidence to go ahead, rejecting Shiv Sena’s argument that the motion should be delayed till the disqualification proceedings against 16 defectors are completed.
Thackeray said he was betrayed by those whom the party offered key positions.
“People who were bestowed with positions by the Shiv Sena are now claiming to be angry with the party. Those who have been given so much today are angry,“ he was quoted as saying in a report.
BJP leaders, hoping to rule Maharashtra again, distributed sweets to celebrate the government’s fall in Mumbai.
The developments in Maharashtra are the latest episode of Indian “resort politics” in which groups of lawmakers are herded into well-guarded luxury hotels to either organise defections or to stop them from switching sides.
“A sad day for democracy in Maharashtra and India. People’s mandate is again run over by the bulldozer of allurement-inducement-intimidation and crass political corruption,“ Indian National Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said.-Bernama
